The Dark Defiles

by Richard K. Morgan

  His fresh ward shattered apart, no better than the first—the chill of the Presence rushed in on him. The rocking chair jerked violently around, from no agency he could see. The thing it held was a corpse.

  The shrunken mounds it made within the wrap of the cloak were unmistakable, the way it skewed awkwardly in the seat, as if blown there by the wind. The cowl was tipped forward like the muzzle of some huge dark worm, shrouding the face. One ivory-pallid hand gripped an armrest, flesh shrunk back from long, curving nails. The other hand was lost in the folds of the cloak, and seemed to be holding something.

  His hand leaped up, across, closed on the hilt of the Ravensfriend where it jutted over his left shoulder.

  “Oh, please,” creaked the voice. “Put that away, why don’t you. If I can break your wards like sticks for kindling, how hard do you think it’s going to be for me to break that dinky little sword of yours as well? You know, for an up-and-coming sorcerer, you show remarkably little breadth of response.”

  Ringil let go the Ravensfriend, felt the pommel slip through his hands as the Kiriath-engineered scabbard sucked the handbreadth of exposed blade back into itself. He eyed the slumped form before him and held down the repeated urge to shiver.

  “And you are?”

  “And still he does not know me.”

  Abruptly, the corpse loomed to its feet, out of the chair as if tugged there by puppet’s strings. Ringil found himself face-to-face with the worm’s head cowl and the blank darkness it framed. He made himself stare back, but if there was a face in there, dead or alive, he could not make it out. The whispering voice seemed to come from everywhere at once—down from the eaves of the thatch, up amid the crackle of the hearth, out of the air just behind his ear.

  “You did not know me at Trelayne’s Eastern Gate, when your destiny was first laid out in terms you could understand. You did not know me at the river, when the first of the Cold gathered to you, and your passage to the Dark Gate began. And I sent a whole shipload of corpses for you when you were finally ready to come back. So tell me, Ringil Eskiath—how many times must I look out at you through the eyes of the dead before I am given my due?”

  It fell in on him like the thatched roof coming down. The cloak and cowl, the stylized placement of hands, one raised to the arm of the chair, the other gathered in the lap, holding—

  “Fifirdar?”

  “Oh, well done.” The corpse turned and shuffled away from him, back toward the hearth. “Took you long enough, didn’t it? Wouldn’t have thought it’d be so hard to recognize the Queen of the Dark Court when she comes calling. We are your ancestral gods, are we not?”

  “Not by my choice,” he said starkly.

  But through his head it went, all the same—the call-and-response prayer to the Mistress of Dice and Death:

  Firfirdar sits

  Upon her molten iron throne

  And is not touched

  By fire

  Is kernel heart of darkness to the blaze

  It was ingrained—a decade of foot-dragging attendance at the Eskiath family temple, every week like clockwork until, finally, at fifteen years of age, he found the words to face his father down and refuse the charade.

  By then, though, the cant was worked into his brain like tanner’s dung.

  Firfirdar smiles

  In shadows lit by liquid fire

  And holds the dice

  Of days

  Holds dice for all, and all that is to come

  Firfirdar lifts

  The dice of days in one cold hand

  And rolls them free

  In fire

  Calls luck like sparks from out the forge of fate

  “Yes, well.” The corpse bent stiffly into the shadows beside the fire-glow and the pallid, long-nailed hand reached a poker from its resting place against the stonework. Firfirdar prodded at the fire, and a log fell loose, cascading embers. “Fortunately, we’re not all dependent on your choices in such matters.”

  “Then why am I here?”

  “Oh.” The poker stabbed into the hearth a couple more times. Sparks billowed up the chimney. The voice rustled about in the flicker-lit, haunted spaces of the croft. “You were passing. It seemed as good a time as any.”

  “You know, for a goddess of death and destiny, you show remarkably little sense of divine grandeur.”

  The corpse leaned over the hearth, cowl pressed to the low stone mantelpiece as if tired by its exertions. The echo of Ringil’s words seemed to hang in the silence. For a long, cold-sweat moment, he wondered if the dark queen would take offense.

  His fingers flexed and formed a brief fist—

  Look, I won’t lie to you, Gil. No ikinri ‘ska ward is going to actually back down a member of the Dark Court. Hjel the Dispossessed, almost apologetic when Ringil asks him. It’s his magic, after all, his heritage he’s teaching. But if you throw enough of them around, well—a faint shrug—you might buy yourself some time, I suppose.

  Time to do what?

  But to that, he gets no answer beyond the dispossessed prince’s customary slipshod grin. Hjel is not what you’d call a consistent guide.

  What he is, exactly, Ringil has yet to work out.

  —and so …

  He loosened the fist, forced his fingers to hang slack. Waited for the dark queen’s response.

  “Funny.” The corpse had not moved, was still bent there over the hearth. It was as if Fifirdar was talking to the flames. “Yes. They did say that. That you think you’re funny.”

  A thick silence poured into the croft behind the snap in that final word. All the hairs on Ringil’s forearms and the back of his neck leaped erect. He mastered the shudder, thrust it down, and stared at the hunched black form. The ikinri ‘ska, swirling like water just below his fingertips …

  The corpse straightened up. Set the poker aside in the shadows by the wall.

  “We’re wasting time,” said Firfirdar sibilantly. “I am not your enemy. You would not still be standing there if I were.”

  “Perhaps not.” Behind the mask he kept, a cool relief went pummeling through his veins. He let the ikinri ‘ska subside. “But please don’t claim the Dark Court has my best interests at heart, either. I’ve read a few too many hero legends to believe that.”

  “Legends are written down by mortals, floundering in the details of their world, seeking significance for their acts where usually there is none.” The corpse hobbled back to its seat by the fire. “You would do well not to set too much store by such tales.”

  “Is it inaccurate, then, my lady, to say that heroes in the service of the gods rarely end well?”

  “Men who carry steel upon their backs and live by it rarely end well. It would be a little unjust to blame the gods for that, don’t you think?”

  Ringil grimaced. “The Mistress of Dice and Death complains to me of injustice? Have you not being paying attention, my lady? Injustice is the fashion—for the last several thousand years, as near as I can determine, and more than likely before that, too. I think it unlikely the Dark Court has not had a hand in any of it.”

  “Well, our attention has been known to wander.” It was hard to be sure with that whispering, rustling voice, but the dark queen seemed amused. “But we are focused on you now, which is what counts. Rejoice, Ringil Eskiath—we are here to help.”

  “Really? The lady Kwelgrish gave me to understand that mortal affairs are a game you play at. It’s hard to rejoice in being treated as a piece on the board.”

  Quiet. The corpse lolled back in the rocking chair’s embrace. The nails of its left hand tapped at the wooden armrest, like the click of dice in a cupped palm.

  “Kwelgrish is … forthright, by the standards of the Court.”

  “You mean she shouldn’t have told me?”

  The soft crackle of the fire in the hearth. Gil thought, uneasily, that the leaping shadows painted on the wall behind Firfirdar were a little too high and animated to fit the modest flames in the hearth that supposedly threw
them. A little too shaped as well, a little too suggestive of upward tilted jaws and teeth, as if some invisible, inaudible dog pack surged and clamored there in the gloom behind the dark queen’s chair, only waiting to be unleashed …

  Very slowly, the corpse lifted both hands to the edges of the cowl it wore. Lifted the dark cloth back and up, away from the visage it covered.

  The breath stopped in Ringil’s throat.

  With an effort of will, he looked back into Firfirdar’s eyes.

  It was not that the corpse she had chosen was hideous with decay—far from it. Apart from a telltale pallor and a sunken look around the eyes, it was a face that might still have belonged with the living.

  But it was beautiful.

  It was the face of some fine-featured, consumptive youth you’d readily kiss and risk infection for. A face you might lose yourself in one haunted back-alley night, then wake without the next day and spend fruitless months searching the stew of streets for again. It was a face that gathered you in, that beckoned you away, that rendered all thought of safety and common sense futile. A face you’d go to gladly, when the time came; no regrets and nothing left behind but a faint and fading smile, printed on your cooling lips.

  “Do you see me, Ringil Eskiath?” asked the hissing, whispering voice.

  It was like flandrijn fumes through his head, like stumbling on a step that suddenly wasn’t there. He reeled and swayed from the force of it, and the corpse’s mouth did not move at all and the voice seemed to come from everywhere at once.

  “Do you see me now?”

  Out of the seething, chilling confusion of his own consciousness, Ringil mustered the will to stay on his feet. He drew in breath, hard.

  “Yes,” he said. “I see you.”

  “Then let us understand each other. It isn’t easy being a god, but some of us are better at it than others. Kwelgrish has her intricate games and her irony, Dakovash his constant rage and disappointment with mortals, and Hoiran just likes to watch. But I am none of these. You would be ill-advised to judge me as if I were. Is that clear?”

  Ringil swallowed, dry-throated. Nodded.

  “That’s good.” The corpse raised pallid hands once more and lifted the cowl back in place. Something went out of the space around them, as if someone had opened a window somewhere to let in fresh air. “Now—to the business at hand. Walk with me, Ringil Eskiath. Convince me that my fellow gods have not been overly optimistic in their assessment of your worth.”

  “Walk with you whe—”

  The fire billowed upward in the hearth, blinded him where he stood. Soundless detonation that deafens his gaze. The croft walls and thatch ripped back, no more substantial than a Majak yurt torn away by cyclone winds. He thought he caught a glimpse of them borne away at some angle it hurts his eyes to look at. Gone, all gone. He blinked—shakes his head—is standing suddenly before a roaring bonfire, on a deserted beach, under an eerily luminescent sky.

  Walk with me here, says Firfirdar quietly.

  She’s unhooded again, it’s the same achingly beautiful dying youth’s face, but here it seems not to have the power it had back in the croft. Or maybe it’s him—maybe he has a power here the real world will not permit him. Either way there’s no punch-to-the-guts menace, no fracturing of his will and sense of self. Instead, he thinks, the Mistress of Dice and Death looks overwhelmingly saddened by something, and maybe a little lost.

  There is not much time, she murmurs. The dwenda have found a way back—though back is a relative term, as they’ll discover soon enough—and with them comes every dark thing men have ever feared.

  Ringil shivers. There’s a hard wind coming off the sea, stoking the bonfire, whipping up the flames and leaching the heat away.

  Then stop them, why don’t you?

  A gossamer smile touches Firfirdar’s mouth at the corners, but it’s etched with that same sadness. Her eyes tilt to the sky.

  That was tried, she says quietly. Once. And your sky still bears the scars.

  He follows her gaze upward. The source of the eerie radiance slips from behind the clouds—the dying, pockmarked little sun he’s heard the dwenda call muhn. He shrugs.

  So try again.

  It will not be permitted again. Even if we could find some way to press upon the sky as hard and deeply as before, such powers must remain leashed. That was the pact, the gift of mending the Book-Keepers gave. We are bound by the codes they wrote.

  Ringil stares into the orange-red heart of the bonfire, as if he could pull some of its heat out and cup it to himself. So much for the gods. Maybe I should just talk to one of these book-keepers instead.

  You already have, Ringil Eskiath. How else would you have returned through the Dark Gate except with its blessing? How else would you have come back from the crossroads?

  Memory stabs at him on that last word. The Creature at the Crossroads, the book it held in its multiple arms. The razor talons it touched him with.

  I should hate to tear you asunder. You show a lot of promise.

  The branches buried in the heart of the fire suddenly look a lot like bones in a pyre. He turns away. He stares away along the shoreline, where the wind is piling up waves and dumping them out incessantly on the sand. Over the sound it makes, he grows aware that Firfirdar is watching him.

  That was the book-keeper? he asks reluctantly.

  One of them, yes.

  He locks down another shiver. Sets his jaw. I was under the impression that I owed my passage through this Dark Gate of yours to Kwelgrish and Dakovash.

  In a manner of speaking, yes, you do. But—come. Firfirdar gestures, away along the ghost-lit beach and into the gloom. Walk with me. Let us talk it through. All will become clear.

  Yeah? Ringil grimaces. That’d be a first.

  But he walks with her anyway, away from the useless glare of the bonfire, the heat it apparently cannot give him. He lets her link her arm through his—he can feel the chill it gives off through his clothing and hers—and she leads him away, under the dwenda muhn.

  In the ghost light it casts, he notices, looking back, that her feet leave no trace on the sand at all.

  After a while, nor do his.

  CHAPTER 5

  hen the doctor was done with Shendanak, Egar went out onto the stairs and called in a couple of the cousins for witness. He picked two faces he knew, men he’d shared grog and grumbling with on the long voyage north. Both had been down off the steppe for a good few years, both had survived in Yhelteth in a number of more or less thuggish capacities before they went to work for Shendanak. They had a flexible city manner about them as a result, and ought to understand the situation beyond any initial dumb-as-fuck tribal loyalties they still might own.

  He hoped.

  He led them to Shendanak’s bedside and let them look.

  “See,” he told them breezily. “Cleaned up and sleeping like a baby.”

  “Yeah?” Durhan, the younger of the two, glowered across to where Salbak Barla was packing up his doctor’s satchel. “So when’s he going to wake up?”

  Egar shot Barla a warning look.

  “Sleep is a great healer,” the doctor said smoothly. “It unmounts the rider of consciousness so that the horse—the body—may rest from its exertions and recover from any wounds it has sustained. The wise rider does not attempt to mount an ill-used horse too soon.”

  Durhan was not appeased. “Don’t fucking talk to me about horses, you city-dwelling twat. I asked you when he’s going to wake up.”

  “Couple of days,” Egar improvised rapidly. “Right, Doc?”

  Barla nodded. “Yes, I was going to say. Given the nature of his wounds, a few days should suffice.”

  Durhan’s companion—a blunt, taciturn Ishlinak by the name of Gart—nodded slowly and fixed Egar with a speculative look.

  “You sure about that, Dragonbane?” he rumbled. “Couple of days? That’s the word you want put out?”

  Egar feigned lack of concern. “You heard the bone man.”


  “Yeah. But I wouldn’t want to be you or your pet bone man here, three days hence, if Klarn still hasn’t made it back. That happens, the brothers are going to take it hard.”

  “That happens,” Durhan echoed, “the brothers are going to want blood.”

  Egar grinned fiercely, no need to fake it this time. “Anyone wants blood, that can be arranged. You just tell them to come see the Dragonbane.”

  Alarm on Salbak Barla’s face, but the two Majak just grunted acknowledgment. It was steppe custom, close enough. It would wash.

  “Couple of days it is,” said Gart.

  “Yeah.” Durhan nodded at the doctor. “You keep him well, bone man, you hear? If you know what’s good for you.”

  “Right, good.” Egar, shepherding them out of the bedchamber. “Now get everybody off the stairs and about their business. I want a sickbed honor vigil out there at most—five men or less, cool heads. You pick them. And no more shaking down the locals in the meantime. We need that shit like a pony needs skates.”

  Durhan balked. “Tand’s men—”

  “The lady Archeth has gone to deal with Tand. That’s her end, this is ours. You get the brothers straightened out for me, we’ll talk about the rest later.”

  He got them to the door, ejected them into the hall, and nodded to Rakan’s men to close up again. Through the wooden panels of the door, he heard Gart’s voice raised against a growing storm of questions in Majak. He closed his eyes, allowed himself the brief moment.

  Here we go again.

  Back in Yhelteth, he’d sworn he was done giving other men orders. He wanted no rank, he wanted no responsibility. He’d tagged along on the expedition for a whole tangle of reasons that he now had trouble teasing apart, but longing for command was not one of them. There was gratitude to Ringil, some vague sense of obligation to Archeth—he was, after all, supposed to be her bodyguard these days—and the common-sense discretion attached to getting out of town after his clash with clan Ashant. And underlying, he knew, was a generous helping of nostalgia for the camaraderie of the war years. The quest had felt like the war again, at least the preparatory part. But he’d reasoned that while there might indeed be some fighting along the way—pirates, unruly locals, maybe finally the minions of this long undead warlord they couldn’t seem to find—still, he’d thought he could take his place in the line without having to worry about what other men thought or feared or needed.